show them you the boss. You always have to get yours first, or else you really aint no leader. If you start taking losses, they see you as weak and shit." Along with the bad pay, the foot soldiers faced terrible job condi- tions. For starters, they had to stand on a street corner all day and do business with crackheads. (The gang members were strongly advised against using the product themselves, advice that was enforced by beatings if necessary.) Foot soldiers also risked arrest and, more worri-   some, violence. Using the gangs financial documents and the rest of Venkateshs research, it is possible to construct an adverse-events index of J. T.s gang during the four years in question. The results are astonishingly bleak. If you were a member of J. T.s gang for all four years, here is the typical fate you would have faced during that period:     Number of times arrested 5.9 Number of nonfatal wounds or injuries 2.4 (not including injuries meted out by the gang itself for rules violations) Chance of being killed 1 in 4     A 1-in-4 chance of being killed! Compare these odds to being a timber cutter, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the most dan- gerous job in the United States. Over four years time, a timber cutter would stand only a 1-in-200 chance of being killed. Or compare the crack dealers odds to those of a death row inmate in Texas, which ex- ecutes more prisoners than any other state. In 2003, Texas put to death twenty-four inmates-or just 5 percent of the nearly 500 in- mates on its death row during that time. Which means that you stand a greater chance of dying while dealing crack in a Chicago housing project than you do while sitting on death row in Texas.